The five-factor model of personality theory has five traits that explain personality. We can remember them through the acronym OCEAN: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Each of the five traits has six facets under it, so we break down the traits into different constructs. One of those constructs for extraversion is called positive emotions, and sometimes it's referred to as cheerfulness. We see a fairly strong association between this facet and the trait level extraversion, meaning many people that are high in extraversion are high in this particular facet of positive emotions, although it is possible of course to have a low score on positive emotions and still have high scores on some of the other facets of extraversion. It's important to remember as well that positive emotions are not the same thing as an absence of negative emotions. Positive emotions are considered a facet of extraversion and negative emotions are a facet of neuroticism. Somebody can have high positive emotions and still have high negative emotions.
Extraversion is a tendency to be gregarious, talkative, assertive, bold, friendly, enthusiastic, and excitement-seeking. Sometimes people who are high in extraversion are described as the “life of the party,” or as having a strong personality. There's also tendency to have positive emotions - to be cheerful. We think of people with high extraversion scores as individuals who gain energy from social interaction. Low extraversion, which is sometimes referred to as introversion, has the tendency to be quiet, reserved, gaining energy from being alone, or sometimes gaining energy from being with just one other person. We also see the ability to deeply analyze information. There is also a tendency to have lower positive emotions.
Smillie, L. D., DeYoung, C. G., & Hall, P. J. (2015). Clarifying the Relation Between Extraversion and Positive Affect. Journal of Personality, 83(5), 564–574.
